A Girl & A Gun

Poison (1991), Todd Haynes

I've loved Haynes since Superstar, but never seen Poison, and I've got to admit I was slightly taken aback by Mark N's audacious choice of date movie.

It turned out to be a good thing, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it on an ad hoc date basis - check whether the person you're interested in likes Foucault first. The film's made up of three inter-cut stories - Horror, Homo and Hero, shot in three genre delirious styles - 1950s sci-fi, queer cinema and documentary, with Genet credited as co-writer. The film looks at sexual stigmatization, debasement and perverse desire (or maybe desire made perverse), but manages to be very funny, touching in places, as well as pretty repulsive. The closing scene to Homo - a technicoloured flashback to the protagonists memory of a gang rape reenacted in spit and rose petals - has got to be one of the most disturbing I've ever seen.

Norman Bryson, Todd Haynes's Poison and Queer Cinema (spoiler warning)

Notes on Haynes over at Senses of Cinema

Kindergarten Cop (1990), Ivan Reitman

Reitman did Ghostbusters and Shivers, but what’s Arnie ever done that’s any good?  Oh yeah, Predator. This isn’t a finest moment for either of them, as Arnie cashes in his man-mountain image to make this not that hilarious or heart-warming family flick. In fact, it’s a weirdly judged film – along with all the “I want to be a princess!” and “Four-score and ten” cuteness you get a murdered junkie girlfriend on a morticians slab.

Pamela Reed, who plays Arnie’s puking and eating sidekick Detective Phoebe O'Hara is good in this – but didn’t go on to do a whole lot more outside of the voice of Ruth Powers in the Simpsons.

Why was the central kid played by twins? And why was he seemingly OK about meeting his mum's new boyfriend shooting his long lost dad the moment he turns up? My son seemed to think it was reasonable. To me, this is the kind of movie that demands a sequel. By now, he’d be in his early twenties, properly psychotic (did no one else find that silver foil stuff a glaring omen of mental illness?). Maybe he's even worked out that there’s two of him.

The scariest person in the whole film is Eleanor Crisp’s evil, uptight mother – played by Carroll ‘Baby Doll Meighan’ Baker. it’s predictable to see the cause of the problem being traced back to the unloving mother, but even that old chestnut can't stop the chill of seeing a women buy an anal thermometer in preparation of welcoming her grandson back into the family.   

Little Women (1994), Armstrong

This is the (vaguely) pro-feminist and anti-slavery version, with an extremely unpromising tag-line: "The story that has Lived in our hearts For generations, Now comes to the screen For the holidays". And yet, I watched it. Curse you TMC and alcohol. Winona Ryder plays a perky Jo March, Susan Sarandon plays Marmee in feisty 19th century stylee. Yep, it really is that bad. There are also three very bad things about  this version that you should really be prepared for in advance:

1. Christian Bale's head.
In other films, he looks normal. In this one, it's hard to stop shouting "run away from the scary head man Jo!" at the screen.

2. Eric Stoltz's hat/hairstyle.
It's a tough call finding Eric Stoltz attractive. You spend half your time cringing. He's actually better looking in Mask than he is in his first shot here.

3. Claire Danes.
Danes makes no impact on this movie what-so-ever until she dies - as a result of a poor woman chucking an infected baby at her. You actually wonder if the director decided to cast Beth as a mute, or someone of sub-normal intelligence. Then she gets her death speech scene and you realise why all her lines have been cut. It's actually one of the most terrifying five minutes committed to celluloid. Danes is like a psychopath, only more intense. If any rational person were in the place of Jo, they'd stake her through the heart just to be absolutely sure she wasn't coming back.

Century (1993), Poliakoff

Watched this with Thomas & Lisa after the spiral film. The curse must have rubbed off on me in some way, because while they both wisely went to bed half and hour before the end, I stuck it out in the hope of working out what it was about.

This film seemed to cover everything – gender politics, sexuality, racism and anti-Semitism, class, the role of science and technology, and social mores – all in the confines of a medical institution at the end of the 1800. Unfortunately it addresses none of them in any meaningful way, and ended up being about eugenics and culling the poor.

Clive Owen plays Paul Reisner, brilliant social climbing Jewish doctor under the tutelage of the also brilliant Professor Mandray (Charles Dance), although it’s the not that brilliant Felix (Neil Stuke) who actually comes up with any ideas. But we know the other two are brilliant because we are told every fifteen minutes.

Miranda Richardson (who went on to play the best ever Queen Elizabeth I) plays Nurse Clara in this, with a weird homage-hairstyle to Eleanor Park’s slightly worse one in The Man with the Golden Arm.

Siunin Wong Fei-hung tsi titmalau (aka Iron Monkey) (1993), Yuen

Watched this a while ago (behind on my film blogging) with my lovely niece Talia Shortland on a kung-fu girls night in.

It's a very good action flick, staring Rongguang Yu (Musa) as the mild mannered doctor, who to noones surprise turns out to be the mysterious Iron Monkey - hated by officialdom and the rich (he's always robbing them) and loved by the poor (he's always redistributing stolen goods).

Donnie Yen plays the famous fighter Wong Kei-Ying, forced into tracking down Iron Monkey. Sze-Man Tsang plays his kick-ass son, Young Wong Fei-Hung, who gets hung upside down and tortured during the course of the film - she's excellent in this but doesn't seem to have done much else. Jean Wang plays the doctors assistant and secret apprentice.

Like the best kung-fu/action movies, it ups the anti throughout - after a sluggish start (watch out for the scene where they argue if the kid is allowed chicken or not)  the "no way! factor kicks in and keeps escalating. Classic old school HK.

Howards End (1992), Ivory

Found this wildly confusing, since I switched on after the credits and only worked out it wasn't Maurice, James Ivory's previous E.M. Foster adaptation, about half way through. Must have been the slightly suggestive name and the mustache count that kept me addled.

It's a very Merchant Ivory treatment of a 1920s set Foster novel. It looks very authentic, if a bit too nice, and has an all star cast - Anthony Hopkins as Henry Wilcox, uptight patriarch of the well-to-do Wilcox family, Emma Thompson the bohemian and modern thinking (but broke) Margaret Schlegel who marries him after his first wife (Vanessa Redgrave) dies. Helena Bonham Carter plays Helen, Margaret's younger, socially concerned but not very far sighted sister.

I'm not a huge fan of Merchant-Ivory. I guess this does it's job. If your crazy for unchallenging portrayals of turn of the twentieth century class distinctions in England, you'll really enjoy it.

Abre los ojos (aka Open Your Eyes) (1997), Amenábar

I actually waited ages to see this film, and avoided Amenábar's remake, Vanilla Sky a couple of times, because I'd heard such good things about it. I spent the whole film veering between concern that it was a pretty average movie and hope that the ending might pull things together. It's basically a psychological thriller, that most difficult of all the genres to pull off. Eduardo Noriega plays rich and supposedly irresistible César, who unfortunately finds true love just hours before being hideously and irreversibly disfigured. It's frankly not even one of the better films about people who become hideously disfigured, and there's not a huge field. The ending seems lazy. Plus Penélope Cruz plays a mime artist. That's her in the picture, wishing she had a proper job and could afford a cardigan.

Safe (1995), Haynes

The digital TV stopped working this weekend, so I dug this out of the VHS create. Matthew McGaughey brought this for me, although I forget why now - I'm guessing because it's a really good film and the landscape is pretty similar to Arizona.

The film looks more 80s than it's 1995 release, mostly due to the leggings and other frightening fashions (decorative pelmet round the ass of your skirt anyone?) worn by the mainstream, suburban mid-90s house...homemakers. 

Julianne Moore (who worked with Haynes again in the 2002 also worthwhile Far from Heaven) plays homemaker Carol White, who lives in an affluent neighborhood in LA and has a life which consists almost entirely of going to the dry cleaners, enduring rubbish sex and worrying about the furnishings.  It's a subtle psychological horror story (in the same vein as The Yellow Wallpaper, which is referenced), which unfolds to deeper and deeper levels of bleakness. Carol is inhibited to to point of non-existence,  and the film documents her search for, and rather unfortunate discovery of, an identity that holds some meaning for her.

It's also a very black comedy - the central themes of US suburbia and New Age heal-thy-self nutters are handled brilliantly, and there are some of the funniest lines you'll have heard for a long time. Moore is one of my favorite living actors.

Link: More stuff on Todd Haynes.

Stravinsky: The Firebird & Les Noces (1996)

Watched this with Addi in London, last weekend. Les Noces (the Wedding) is her favorite ballet and one I hadn't seen before - really good, with outstanding choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, Vaclav's less famous sister, and performed here by the Royal Ballet. The costumes are understated and help construct the architectural spaces of the (sometimes creepily) ritualistic performance perfectly. The score is incredible -  voices, percussion, and piano. Unromantic enough even for me.

By contrast to the modernity of Les Noces, The Firebird seemed positively archaic, attractive and with some great performances, but over wrought and conservative in comparison. 

Pretty Woman (1990), Marshall

The original screen play apparently ended with Julia Robert's character going back to her crappy life of street prostitution. However, Garry Marshall seized the opportunity to direct something that wasn't distinguished only by an overly fat veneer of sentimentality for once - and so delivered the most cynical movie ever made. Prostitutes really can become princesses! Money can buy you the respect you are otherwise unfairly denied! Evil capitalist control freaks just need love! 

That some people think this is a romantic comedy or find it in anyway heart warming scares the bjesus out of me. They should make a sequel where Richard Gere is pimping a crackhead Roberts out to sweeten business deals.